Visiting ElevenEs, Europe’s first home-grown LFP blade cell facility!
Huge thanks to Marko Cvetković for the invite to visit their production line in Subotica, Serbia. If you don't know, entering these kind of facilities are very strict and demanding, so before we finalized our dressing to look like our guide in the middle, we took the opportunity to take a picture so you can recognize me.
It was great to see the pilot facility (thanks to Aleksandar Kovac and Dušan Šubić), learn about ElevenEs history (Marton Pap, Nemanja Crepulja and Nemanja Mikac) share the magneto-chemistry that we are at developing at Gaussion
As always, I learnt so much by speaking to engineers running the line. Here are my top three takeaways:
Mixing is complex: The slurry mixing process is hyper sensitive to changes in additive ratios, mixing speeds and X to name a few. This all means that achieving a consistent slurry viscosity is as much of an art as a science. This early step is crucial to making consistent, and high quality cells - especially in a growing industry where quality concerns may arise during rapid scaling
Tiny details matter: There are so many tuneable parameters in a factory (thousands!) but even things as small as the diameter of transfer rolls impact cell yield. These tiny details stack and identifying the impact of each one is wickedly complex, this explains why cell yields are so low in early production.
Machines aren’t standard: Even when buying machines from top global producers, engineers at facilities will likely have to tinker with software and hardware to make sure the machine can do precisely what is needed for each application. This, again, is a time consuming process and add yet another level of complexity when trying to produce cells.
Big thanks to the ElevenEs team for showing me round and finding some time to chat!
#sustainability #batteries #manufacturing #lfp
